


He's Just Not Put Together

by Helpnotwanted



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alpha Kim Minseok | Xiumin, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - College/University, ChanBaek - Freeform, Crack?, Eventual Smut, I tried to make this not super dumb, M/M, Omega Kim Jongdae | Chen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past krisho, Rating will go up, Slow Burn, WE GONNA TALK ABOUT HEATS YO, and they were ROOMMATES, eventually, sulay - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-02-24 21:15:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21764638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helpnotwanted/pseuds/Helpnotwanted
Summary: Jongdae likes to think he isn't that much of a mess. He's got a new roommate, though, who somehow manages to make him feel like both a total square, and a fucking basket case all at once. He doesn't appreciate the feeling.
Relationships: Kim Jongdae | Chen/Kim Minseok | Xiumin
Comments: 35
Kudos: 241





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Growl For Me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8584318) by [MitchMatchedSocks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MitchMatchedSocks/pseuds/MitchMatchedSocks). 



> So parts of this are inspired by MitchMatchedSock's 'Growl For Me' which more or less convinced me that I could write abo without it being completely depravedly dumb. Mitch is also a really great writer whose works you should go read, what are you still doing here.
> 
> (Specifically, I'm gonna treat heats as more of a period-like inconvenience rather than a debilitating loss of control, but like, with a twist.)
> 
> I would also like to personally call out Lunicole for convincing me that this was a good idea in the first place, but also thank her for letting me harass her with it while I write it.
> 
> I don't intend on drawing out the slow burn too much, and I tried to balance out how much I wanted this to just be porn w/ vague amounts of plot vs. how much projection is actually going on here. Wish me luck.

It’s barely halfway through the Fall semester when Junmyeon informs Jongdae that he is moving out, soon, and then in the very same breath, that he’s already found a replacement roommate, and that he has everything under control, no need to worry, it’s all taken care of. It leaves Jongdae gaping rather helplessly for a moment, like a buffering computer trying to process a too-heavy load all at once. There are many different pieces to Junmyeon's statement that need to be parsed individually. Some of them are more noticeably problematic than others.

“What the hell, Myeon. Soon as in how soon?” Jongdae's voice is high and wavering in a way he knows is rather annoying, but that he can never quite help. Junmyeon, for his part, is sheepish in the doorway of Jongdae's bedroom, a bit like a toddler wary of impending punishment.

“Sometime over break but like, probably immediately after midterms are over?” Jongdae must be making some sort of face because Junmyeon winces. “Look, I know this is like, a textbook dick move, but there was some kind of last-minute vacancy, and if I don’t take it now I’ll lose my spot on the list.” Junmyeon had fought tooth and nail for his spot on that waiting list. Jongdae knows this because he’d had to hear about it for days on end at the beginning of the semester. How coveted the graduate dorms on the campus downtown were, how difficult to obtain. How many poor, unsuspecting students on secretary duty he’d had to terrorize with sweet smiles and abstractedly veiled threats.

“But you’ve found someone to take the room?” Junmyeon’s nodding is emphatic in its affirmative. And really, it’s just like him to come up with something like this, completely out of the blue, and yet still manage to be barely enough of a responsible adult and good friend that Jongdae cannot, ethically speaking, be as upset with him as he feels he has the right to be. But Junmyeon presses on.

“There’s a friend of Yixing's from the dance department who’s looking for a place. He’s uh, an alpha.” Junmyeon flinches again as Jongdae’s eyebrows shoot back up, and aha: there’s the catch. “But he’s, like, a super chill dude. Real respectful and upstanding, comes with great reviews. And he’s apparently some sort of clean freak, so he’ll be way more of a better roommate than I ever was.” Jongdae kind of wants to point out how low of a bar that was to begin with, but Junmyeon looks sufficiently contrite that he doesn’t feel like being mean about it, even though, again, there's a sort of self-righteous indignation nagging at him to do it anyways.

“Do I at least get to meet him before he moves in?” More excessive nodding.

“Of course! He’s supposed to drop by at some point this week to check the place out. Make sure the walls aren’t, like, full of asbestos or something.” There’s a small, unimpressed pause as Junmyeon waits for Jongdae to react, which he does not. It might be one of his main occupations on a daily basis to remind Junmyeon of just how little sense of humour he actually possesses, but Jongdae is stressed out and distracted, not to mention blindsided. There are currently something like well over thirty seperate open tabs on the browser of his laptop, and several classes’ worth of notations obscuring the surface of his desk, while the impending threat of recitals, evaluations and soon-to-be-due research papers loom over his very near future. Junmyeon probably realizes this as the awkwardly smiling grimace slides off of his face, and he starts fidgeting again. “You’ll get to give the OK too, once you meet him.”

“So glad you thought to include me in the entire process,” Jongdae gripes. His voice has gone back up the few octaves that make it sound petulant and irritating. He only feels a little guilty when Junmyeon’s expression falls a bit more, because again, tired and distracted. The roommate issue was something they would have had to deal with at some point before the start of the next semester, eventually, and Jongdae supposes that on some level he should be grateful that Junmyeon did all the legwork. But he’d still have much rather not deal with it at this particular moment, and maybe have had a look at a more varied array of candidates than Junmyeon's single alpha. In any case, there's not much he really can do about it right now, apart from let Junmyeon handle the entire thing as he promises, repeatedly, that he will. 

And trust, somehow, that Junmyeon wouldn't actually screw him over with something like this. On purpose.

———

Baekhyun, for his part, has an insultingly hard time not finding the entire thing very, very amusing, because Baekhyun is a little troll whose preferred means of entertainment consists entirely of schadenfreude, and who sees the people closest to him as the butt of some sort of cosmic slapstick comedy. 

"You're so going to get murdered in your sleep."

"Could you please stop. You're really not funny."

"This feels like the premise of a B-series horror movie. Or a bad romcom. A bad romcom B-series horror movie."

"We're supposed to be studying. Can we please just study?"

"He's gonna turn out to have really bad hygiene, worse than Junmyeon. I knew someone in chamber choir, first year, whose roommate never washed his towels, and they were all mildewy and it made the bathroom stink like stale alpha sweat."

"You're disgusting. We were in the same chamber choir first year, where do you even hear these stories. Anyways Junmyeon said he's clean."

"Unlike you, you unsociable nut, I actually talk to people. And like Junmyeon is the best judge of character and, you know, tidiness. We should internet stalk him."

"Who?"

"Your new roommate." Reflexively, Jongdae wants to protest, but then he hesitates for the handful of seconds necessary for the idea to take root. Baekhyun has already whipped out his phone, dropping it on top of the theory textbook they're supposed to be cramming together.

"Did Junmyeon even give you a name?"

"Uh, just his first name. Minseok." He'd mentioned it after telling Jongdae the approximate time he's supposed to drop by to check out the apartment.

"And he knows Yixing, right? He's a dance grad? We can start there." Despite himself, Jongdae cranes his neck to peak over Baekhyun's shoulder and watch him cycle through media apps, clicking on profiles and scrolling through feeds -- all in the name of science and, probably, Jongdae's personal security. They find a match surprisingly quickly.

"Here, there's one he was tagged with last month -- oh, wait, that can't be him." Jongdae leans in further to glance at what he recognizes is someone's Instagram feed, and has to agree. "You said he was an alpha, right?" Which, this guy definitely isn't. 

"Yeah. Wow, that's a lot of selfies."

"It's Insta, it's a fairly standard amount of selfies. This dude is kinda pretty, though." Again, Jongdae has to agree. The profile is weirdly aesthetic, filled with self-portraits that feel professionally shot but are made to look like they were taken with a badly filtered cameraphone. Probable-omega Minseok has got huge, slanted eyes framed in darkly thick lashes, angular eyebrows and an exaggerated cupid's bow set in between adorably round cheeks. He looks soft and cute even in sweaty practice-room group photos, messy hair peaking over someone else's shoulder. Apparently he likes visiting the quaint local coffee shops Jongdae knows exist in the vicinity but has never stepped foot in himself, as well as befriending the campus strays. Jongdae feels like the entire thing should be vapid and pretentious, but he has to concede, somewhat begrudgingly, that the guy pulls it off really well. He thinks of the up-flick at the corners of his own mouth, and the way people have often described his looks as feline. He tries not to compare. He fails. In any case, it's not their guy, and Baekhyun has already tapped out of the profile to go look somewhere else. While there's apparently a surprising number of people by the name of Minseok around campus, aesthetic-Instagram Minseok is the only one with any vague connection to either Yixing or the performing arts department. There's one on the school improv club, according to Facebook, but the only publicly accessible photo of him is low quality and from a distance. Jongdae squints at it all the same, trying to make out anything that could tip him off as to wether this is his maybe-roommate or not. Then Baekhyun finds a Minseok on one of the sports team neither of them were aware they even had at their school, and while this guy looks like a probable alpha, Jongdae doubts he has anything to do with the dance program.

"Those are greek letters, Baek, doesn't that mean he's a part of a frat? Don't they all live in the same house if they're a part of a frat?"

"Not all of them, I don't think." He's still scrolling through pictures and posts, and Jongdae winces.

"I really hope that's not him." The guy doesn't exactly look like an awful person, per se, but there are a lot of blurry group shots of tall, intimidating people leaning into each other, holding up bottles and solo cups. "Junmyeon said this guy was chill. He knows better than to set me up with some frat alpha-bro who gets blackout drunk on weekday nights. I'm a squishy arts student, Baek, I don't deal well with loud, obnoxious people who travel in packs. Not in my home." He slumps his way onto Baekhyun's bony shoulder halfway through his whine, and Baekhyun nudges him off with a huff.

"You're such a fucking pussy sometimes. You're also, by the way, way louder and more obnoxious than even the worse kind of frat alpha." Jongdae stops slumping to glare his betrayal.

"Like you're any better." 

Baekhyun sticks out his tongue, because he is a child, and has no counterargument.

"Anyways I don't think that's him either, he doesn't look like a dance grad." 

In the end, they don't turn up much of anything more promising than the first profile of the kittenish omega on Instagram. The entire endeavour is an exercise in futility that spirals out into an increasingly thin excuse to procrastinate, and Jongdae has to spend the rest of the afternoon herding Baekhyun's attention away from all the weird shit he inevitably digs up wherever he goes on the internet, which that evening, for some reason, is existentially absurd edits of kid's shows on Youtube.

\-----

There was nothing Jongdae could have really done, he thinks, to prepare himself for actually meeting his potential new roommate. Because, lo and behold, it is him: the guy whom Baekhyun and Jongdae had both been so quick to peg as omega. When Jongdae emerges from his room following the clanking and clatter of several people entering the apartment, it's just in time to catch sight of Junmyeon, Yixing and the new guy spilling into the small space in between the kitchen and the living room that serves as their front entrance. He hasn't been noticed yet, apparently, because the first thing the guy does after kicking his shoes off is take a few steps into the kitchen, full of impish, excited wonder as he takes in the diminutive space. Jongdae draws level with Junmyeon, and they share a look. Jongdae can tell how easily Junmyeon reads the shock on his face, though he isn't really doing much better. The newcomer, meanwhile, has done a small turn on himself to look over the (exceptionally) clean countertops, the fridge in the corner and the barely-there breakfast table before facing the living room. And yeah. The face is unmistakably the same one from the profile they'd stalked: sweet and cherubic, with sharp eyes contrasting how round the rest of his features are, the prominently curved bow of his mouth parted over little gasps of wonder. The rest of him, though, is impossible to interpret as anything other than alpha. He's short, shorter even than maybe Jongdae and Junmyeon, but he's stocky in a way that his softly cardiganed selfies had not translated at all. And if the solid build of his frame weren't already a dead giveaway, then the signature spice of his scent would be anyway. It's not even really that powerful or overbearing, just very noticeably highlighted against the familiar blend of him and Junmyeon that permeates the apartment. Yixing is there as well, a muted presence in the background where Jongdae knows he's leaning against the wall near the door, scrolling uninterestedly through his phone.

"Wow, this is a really nice place." 

It is. Jongdae knows how good the apartment looks. It's small, but comfortable in a way that the undergrad dorms really aren't, and it feels enough like home to make him more territorial about it than it either warrants, or that he has any real right to be. He desperately wants to keep it, though, despite Junmyeon leaving, but there's a distractingly strange new alpha in his space and Jongdae isn't sure what's more disconcerting: that, or just how decidedly unsettling the guy's weirdly young features are against, well, the rest of him. It's hard not to melt just a bit at the delighted expression on this guy's face, as he surveys the beaten-up couch and walled-over fireplace that houses the TV and Junmyeon's old, salvaged GameCube.

"I'm really glad you like it. You have no idea how much of a lifesaver this is." Junmyeon's nervously hovering in the vicinity of Jongdae's shoulder, still clutching his sweater and satchel from outside. Jongdae stands there in his sweatpants and oversized hoodie while the short alpha waves a hand dismissively, eyes still roaming the apartment.

"Nah, this is great. I needed to get out of my lease, this is just really good luck." He's taken a few steps forward to peer around a corner down the hallway with the doors to the bathroom and Junmyeon's bedroom, and then he turns around to fully face them for the first time since Jongdae arrived. The width of his grin makes the apples of his cheeks pop out, revealing a gummy smile and reducing his eyes to squinty little slivers.

"You must be the other occupant. I'm Minseok." He's offering up a hand to shake, and as Jongdae takes it he thinks that it must have warmed up outside since last night, judging by the t-shirt the guy's wearing that leaves his stupidly toned arms on display. He and Yixing must be headed for either practice rooms or the gym, given the casual sportswear they're both decked in. Jongdae lets go of the hand, and still he can't help but steal glances between the breadth of shoulders on display and the curl at the edge of full lips, the still-smiling eyes.

"I'm, uh, Jongdae. Nice to meet you."

"You'll want to check out the room, I'm guessing." Junmyeon shuffles forward between them stiffly to point in the right direction, and the short alpha follows good-naturedly. In passing, he peers in towards the semi-open door of Jongdae's own room, which, thank god, is currently relatively free of exam-induced clutter. While their voices carry over muffledly from further and further down the hall, Jongdae doesn't really know what to do with himself, so he stays. A glance over his shoulder reveals that Yixing is still playing with his phone, but the alpha glances up to meet Jongdae's eyes in the ensuing silence left by the other two's departure. Jongdae gets offered a slight smile, which he returns. Awkwardly.

"Minseok's a really nice guy," Yixing assures him. "He'll be a great roommate. You'll never have to complain about the dishes ever again."

"That's what Junmyeon said." 

Yixing gives him another half-smile, deep dimple on full display.

"I've known him for years. We were undergrads together. Now we've got the same supervisor. Which, speaking of." Yixing flicks the screen of his phone back on to glance at the clock, and pushes off from the wall. "Minseok, we gotta move," he calls loudly.

There's a burst of laughter, light and playful, floating over from the direction of the bathroom where Junmyeon must be giving the grand tour. Minseok comes back into the living room first, smiling still, hands in his pockets. Junmyeon follows behind looking very much like Jongdae feels — kind of off-center and coping weirdly with something new and bewildering, which he is trying unsuccessfully to not show. Minseok doesn't seem to notice at all.

"You'll have to talk it over with the landlord, but anywhere between the 19th and the 22nd should be ok. There's a deposit for the key, and, uh, the mattress is mine, unfortunately. The couch too, so you'll have to see with Jongdae about replacing it." Ah, crap. The couch. And the console. And the water boiler, too, unless Junmyeon forgets that that was originally his, since he barely ever uses it. Junmyeon is sending him another one of his apologetic, sheepish looks over Minseok's shoulder while the alpha goes to grab his bag from where Yixing is handing it over, waving away Junmyeon's worries with another backhanded motion.

"That's not a big deal, I'm sure I can manage to replace those." Jongdae is in the midst of wondering how one easily replaces a mattress and couch on short notice while on a grad student budget when the alpha turns to him, eyebrows high over inquisitive eyes as he shoulders his duffel. "Unless you already had something in mind, for the couch." 

Jongdae shakes his head. 

"No, I hadn't." He honestly hadn't thought of it at all, too busy trying not to think about the stress of Junmyeon's upcoming departure, and concentrate instead on the stress of his ongoing evaluations. Minseok gives him another one of his wide, squinting smiles.

"Great. We'll hash out the details later — Xing gave you my number, right?" The last part is meant for Junmyeon, who nods.

"Of course." And then Minseok is following Yixing out the door with one last wave and friendly grin, and Jongdae and Junmyeon are left standing dumbly in the silence of their own living room, staring after them. Junmyeon still hasn't let go of the fluffy sweater he'd worn out that morning.

"You'd never even met him before, hadn't you," Jongdae accuses. Junmyeon flounders.

"I've known him by name! He's been a friend of Yixing's for like, years," Junmyeon protests. Kris had been a friend of Yixing's too, Jongdae feels like pointing out, but that's a can of worms that's really best not to drag into this mess, or any. "And I've been assured by several different people who know him that he's exceptionally clean and quiet."

"That's what everyone keeps saying," Jongdae huffs, and turns back towards the direction of his room, and the useless, neverending stacks of lecture readings waiting for him there.

"You like him, though, right?" Junmyeon follows, anxious.

"I don't know him, Myeon."

"You know what I mean. He's nice, right? No alpha posturing, no obnoxiousness." Jongdae slumps down into his desk chair and stares absently into the darkened screen of his laptop. He can still pick out traces of the guy's presence in the air, disturbed into following their movement all the way into Jongdae's room. He thinks of the casual set of his posture, the passive but noticeably solid weight of him. Jongdae had always thought of Yixing as a pretty beefy guy, but he'd seemed almost slim next to the other alpha, despite the advantage in height. Then he sees that face again. 

"He seems fine, Myeon. I give you my OK, if that's what you're looking for." Jongdae shuffles his notes around, just for something to do, and Junmyeon hesitates in the frame of his door. There's a pause, and then they exchange what Jongdae is pretty sure is a small moment of neither wanting to be the first to say what they're thinking out loud.

"He's, uh." Junmyeon clears his throat, twisting fabric between his fingers and picking at the strap of his bag, which he still has looped over his shoulder "He's kind of, uh, special, isnt he."

Junmyeon has never been the most eloquent of people, nor the most tactful. But still, he has no idea. He hadn't seen the Instagram posts.

"You say that like he's got some kind of undiagnosed disorder."

"You know what I mean, Dae."

"He looked kind of really young, didn't he?" Jongdae finally admits, begrudgingly, and they share a small giggle -- or in Junmyeon's case, a disbelieving snort.

"He looked all of twelve years old. And he's, like, older than me, too, I think." Junmyeon stops laughing to frown. "That's so not fair." Jongdae rolls his eyes.

"Get out, old man. Don't you still have lectures this afternoon?" Junmyeon makes a small noise of distress at the reminder, before checking his watch with a flick of his wrist like the snooty, snobby rich boy that he is. 

"Oh god. I'm not going to have the time to eat lunch."

\------

The rest of the week passes by in a whirl of examinations and long, grueling hours spent in stifling practice rooms where the previous occupants left the delectable aroma of their lunch curry. A girl nearly passes out on her turn right before him during the recital exam, and Jongdae has to convince Baekhyun on one memorable occasion that it's not worth dropping out entirely just to avoid handing in his last research paper. Bright and early on Saturday, after a well-earned but still agonizingly insufficient 13 consecutive hours of sleep, Junmyeon has to bribe Jongdae out of bed with still-steaming pastries from the french bakery down the street. The smell of them calling from the kitchen is the only primal, single-minded motivation that gets him to stick his head out from underneath his stiflingly warm cocoon of his blankets. Junmyeon, of course, is already awake, dressed, and stressing out.

Jongdae disgruntingly discovers first thing that, since he'd been there last night, Junmyeon has taken out most of his toiletries from the bathroom cabinets and strewn them haphazardly over the sink and other horizontal surfaces available, leaving very little room for anything a bathroom is actually used for. Then he rediscovers the gaping hole in the living room where their couch used to be, ferried away the day before during Jongdae's last exam by someone Junmyeon knows with a car. It's a disgruntling sight that hits rather hard through the early morning, post-exam haze that clogs his brain like sticky glue. It does, however, make for less obstacles in between him and the food.

In his room, Junmyeon is pacing around hands all a-flutter like he doesn't know where to start. There's one of his suitcases split belly-up in the middle of the room, with what looks like the entirety of his wardrobe simply deposited on top. Jongdae doesn't know how he expects to ever close it; there isn't a single item in the pile that's either folded or rolled up.

"When was your last exam again," he grunts through a mouthful of pastry.

"Thursday," Junmyeon hisses, shoving the suitcase to the side with a foot so he can start pulling forward the stack of old textbooks that lives by his desk. "Why?"

"Why didn't you get more of a head start?"

"I did," he gestures wildly at the pile of clothes. "I did my laundry. All of it. Every single piece." And then, evidently, didn't know what to do about it afterwards. "Then yesterday we moved the couch, and that took all afternoon." He's started stress-organizing his books into seperate stacks according to a logic Jongdae can't be bothered to make out, not while he's busy coming to terms with what he knows the rest of their day is going to look like. It's like he's seeing the accumulated disaster of Junmyeon's bedroom for the first time. Logically, he's always known it was there. But he'd been happy ignoring it for the several long years when it wasn't his problem. The last of his croissant feels a bit thick when he swallows. He goes back to his room, pulls on his favourite pair of sweatpants, oversized hoodie, and doesn't bother brushing his hair before squashing a beanie on top.

Over the rest of the day, Jongdae and Junmyeon discover that they have completely forgotten whose cooking implements are whose in the kitchen drawers, and that the back of Junmyeon's closet is a biohazard Jongdae refuses to brave. Junmyeon nearly has a nervous breakdown when he starts obsessing over of the logistics of fitting his mattress down the narrow entranceway stairs, even though they'd gotten it through the first time around, so clearly there should be a way. It's also not something that's supposed to happen until the next day anyways. Outside, there's a growing pile of black plastic garbage bags sitting on the curb as Junmyeon works on gutting out the far and crusty reaches of his room, and Jongdae hopes the neighbours won't mind it being there for the next four days it'll take for the city to pick it all up. In the now weirdly open space of their living room where the couch used to live, there's a mirrored pile of luggage and boxes that have managed to painstakingly be put together despite the disorganized and confusing way that Junymeon goes about it. And even though the weather has grown a bit chilly again, both the front doors are wide open on either end of the staircase, because neither of them can be bothered. Jongdae's stuck his head inside to bowels of the fridge to give it a quick scour -- at that point, he might as well -- when Junmyeon yells at him that he thinks his ride is there. Sure enough, there's a knock echoing up at them from the front door, but Junmyeon's got rubber gloves on and hands full of Windex and paper towels. He's giving him some sort of expressive eye gesture from the bathroom threshold, so Jongdae glares while he shuts the fridge door and rids himself of his own rubber gloves to grab a couple of boxes.

He doesn't make it very far down the stairs, though, because he almost collides box-first with an unexpected and very close mop of discoloured bubblegum-pink hair. It's the back of someone's head, that much Jongdae can make out by peering over the precarious and unsealed pile of heavy cardboard he's carrying. There's a bit of a scramble as people try to avoid each other and the heavy items being ferried, as well as several loud shouts of alarm.

"Dude, what the fuck, I almost dropped the fucking couch." Jongdae has backed up the few steps that allow him a better view, which is now mostly filled with the owner of the pink hair -- who is, apparently, a giant. There is also a couch. The voice, however, he recognizes, and it doesn't give him much time to ogle whoever it is he almost ran into as he whips around to follow the direction it came from. But the stairwell's got a slight turn near the street entrance, and it leaves Minseok mostly obscured by the hefty piece of furniture that is, impossibly, taking up most of the space.

"Sorry! Sorry," Bubblegum Hair bellows, loudly, so that it echoes and rings through the enclosed space. "I almost ran into someone." Minseok peaks his head in as far as he can around both the couch and the corner, and somehow manages to catch a glimpse of the both of them. His face lights up with the type of enthusiasm that inspires anime-style sparkles.

"Oh hey! That's Jongdae."

"Heya, Jongdae." Bubblegum Hair manages to somehow look endlessly pleased to meet him in the middle of a narrow and crowded stairwell, arms full of furniture and neck twisted around so he can beam up at him like an overgrown puppy. Jongdae, stupidly, wants to wave, but he himself has got his arms full, so he gives a hopefully candid smile in return while realizing that he's still in the way. 

"Hi! Sorry, I uh-- just let me--" He starts to back up and make room. Junmyeon meets him by the kitchen table with his hands still encased in pink rubber, like a comically unthreatening version of Dr Frank-N-Furter.

"Oh, right, I forgot they were coming today too." 

Jongdae glares at him, again. Pink Hair huffs and grunts past them with Minseok in tow, and they get to watch the morbidly fascinating display of two very obviously fit alphas transporting an entire couch into their apartment. Jongdae knows that both he and Junmyeon are staring, but it's not like either of the other two are in a position to notice. They are, however, once they both drop the piece of furniture almost as soon as Minseok has inched past the invisible border of the living room. They can't get much further, what with Junmyeon's stuff taking up most of the space, so the couch is still kind of in the way, but at least it's not blocking the exit. Bubblegum Hair brushes his hands off on his thighs with an oddly dramatic flourish, before turning around and wolf-whistling.

"Oh my god, this is adorable."

"Isn't it?" Over by his end, Minseok is catching his breath with his hands on his hip and that curly smile Jongdae remembers from the one time he'd met him. Instagram really, really hadn't done the guy justice; not how adorably floppy his hair is when it falls in his face and he jerks it away with a flick of his head, or, of course, what he looks like in a tank top. Jongdae knows for a fact that it's cold outside. Even Alpha Pink Dye-Job has long sleeves on. Both him and Junmyeon are buried under layers to make up for the fact that the heat is not currently on. 

"These are some really nice digs you've got here, my dudes." Bubblegum Hair is doing a pretty good emulation of the gape, turn and stare that Minseok had performed when he'd seen the place last week, except louder and with considerably more limbs. 

"Told you so. Guys, this is Chanyeol. Chanyeol, Junmyeon, and Jongdae," Minseok points at each of them in turn. "Jongdae's gonna be my roommate." Jongdae realizes that he can't wave or really acknowledge the introduction with more than a jerk of the head, because he's still holding onto the boxes. He puts them down just in time for one of his hands to get positively engulfed in a very enthusiastic handshake as Chanyeol leans over the couch to greet him, and Jongdae gets to fully appreciate just how huge he really is. It'd been pretty noticeably contrasted against the doorframe when he'd barely managed to not have to duck through, and now that he's hovering somehow over both the couch and Jongdae's personal space, Jongdae feels appropriately dwarfed. Chanyeol might even have given Kris a run for his money, except he's all brightly coloured hair and goofy smiles where Kris had been sharp angles and dark, angry eyebrows. Jongdae risks a look at Junymeon, who is, predictably, fully gaping.

"Chanyeol's helping me move some of the heavier stuff in for today," Minseok explains, and Chanyeol leans back into his own side of the couch so that he can give them a beaming mock salute. 

"I'll come back tomorrow, too, for the mattress," he adds on, but his eyes have wandered off to the side to continue to dress down the apartment, which is already starting to look pretty bare.

"Aw, thanks man." Minseok coos like Chanyeol is a dog that's just shown off a particularly cute trick, and Chanyeol preens like that's exactly what he is.

"No problem. My flight isn't until Monday anyways. This place is really dope, though."

Minseok looks over at Jongdae, then, when he smiles, for some reason. Jongdae finds himself smiling back. Then freezing when he can feel Junmyeon staring at him. There's a honk from outdoors, grabbing all of their collective attention, and Junmyeon picks right back up at being flustered and on edge like someone just pressed unpause.

"Now that's actually my ride." He nudges urgently for Jongdae to pick up the boxes again, which he does, if only to give him something to do that isn't stupidly waiting for someone with more social skills than he has to say something. Junmyeon finally pulls off his gloves to grab a suitcase, and Chanyeol and Minseok get busy trying to manoeuvre the couch so it isn't quite as in the way. Then they offer to help, so all in all loading up Junmyeon's stuff goes by very quickly. Junmyeon is still downstairs talking to his ride when Jongdae finds himself, quite involuntarily, alone in the apartment with Chanyeol and Minseok, and he's not entirely sure what either of them are still doing there. He's still got half a fridge to scrub down, but he feels like it would be rude somehow to just turn around and get to work while they're around, so instead her serves them both glasses of water while feeling like a particularly under-achieving housewife. Chanyeol is inspecting the vestigial fireplace, cackling at what sounds like some kind of inside joke. Minseok is sitting at the kitchen table, grinning.

"You should put the string lights up right here," Chanyeol points at the little blank arch in the wall of the living room. "And your orchids over there," he moves the finger to the mantle. "It'd be perfect. Like a real Pinterest post."

"I dunno. Jongdae, what would you think of string lights in the living room?" Both Minseok and Chanyeol turn to him, smirking like dumb kids, and Jongdae knows he's missing a punchline somewhere.

"Uh, they'd be nice?" Chanyeol turns away, cackling again, and Minseok, unfortunately, catches the slightly alarmed look that Jongdae sends the tall alpha behind his back. But then he winks.

"A friend gave them to me as a gag gift at some point, but I actually really like them. They're cute."

"Of course you like them," Chanyeol tosses their way. " You like all of the dumb gag gifts Lu Han's ever gotten you. Our Minseokkie here," he comes to kneel on the couch behind Minseok's chair, making a point of stooping down to hulk over his shoulders, "has absolutely terrible taste in decor." Minseok snorts and rolls his eyes, whacking at Chanyeol from over his shoulder. Jongdae looks at the couch, the single piece of furniture that his soon-to-be roommate has thus far brought into the house. It's not that bad. Might even be homier than Junmyeon's old beat up college hand-me-down. Decor had not exactly been either of their top priorities together. Jongdae doesn't know many people their age, in college, whose priority it actually is beyond the occasional blue-tacked poster. He himself doesn't really know what's wrong with string lights; he's never thought of them as much more than lights, but on a string.

"My taste is fine. Yours is just as bad, anyways, you fucking hippie pastel stoner-wannabe." 

Chanyeol giggles while he heaves off the couch to make another circuit of the common spaces.

"This is where you should put the stereo system," he points at the corner that used to shelter Junmyeon's single lonely house plant. 

"I don't have a stereo system, Yeol, I'm not that rich." Chanyeol clicks his tongue and shakes his head disbelievingly.

"Priorities, my dude. That's why you have me. Speaking of," he whirls back on the two of them, smile stretched widely from one prominent ear to the other, and Jongdae feels caught in the headlights. "You are having a housewarming party," he points at Minseok.

"I am?" Minseok looks surprised, and Jongdae is glad that this is apparently news to him too.

"Hell yeah you are. Once everyone's back from break. You can't not have a housewarming party."

"Jongdae?" Minseok is looking at him again, expression open, inquisitive. "Would you mind?"

"I, uh."

"It wouldn't be anything huge," Chanyeol assures him, while he splays the entire lanky length of himself over the back of the couch, head on top of folded hands like he's attempting to blink up at Jongdae like the carricature of an elementary school student. Or, again, a particularly overgrown puppy. Jongdae frowns.

"It's not really like you could fit that many people in here anyways," he points out with a gesture. Chanyeol just grins.

"Exactly. We'll have a couple people over, some of your friends too, and that way everyone gets to know each other. This place is way too cute for you both to keep it all to yourselves." 

"I mean, sure." He has to peak a glance at Minseok, but the other alpha is just observing them with his chin in his hand. He smiles warmly when Jongdae meets his eyes. "If it's just a get-together."

Chanyeol makes a ridiculously over-the-top victory gesture, fists raised to the ceiling and rolling onto his back on the couch, and Minseok is laughing again. Jongdae wonders wether all of his new roommate's acquaintances are of the same species as this one.

Junmyeon comes poking his head up the stairs to inform Jongdae that he will be back soon enough after he's done dropping off his stuff at the new dorm. He invites both Chanyeol and Minseok to stay for pizza afterwards, which makes Jongdae feel retrospectively dumb for not have thought of himself, but they decline anyways and head out at the same time as Junmyeon. Which leaves Jongdae to his fridge-cleaning, and not much else.

Later that evening, Junmyeon insists on sharing a bed with him, despite the fact that he specifically did not bring his mattress over to the new dorm so he would have something to sleep on that night. He says his own room is too bare and it's freaking him out, but Jongdae suspects he's getting into a weirdly emotional mood about leaving Jongdae behind. Jongdae himself might be as well, because he lets him, despite all the whining and grumbling he does about it the entire time Junmyeon forcibly pulls open the duvet to climb in and all over Jongdae.

"I can't believe I'm doing this to you," he sobs, face buried in the top of Jongdae's head, who tries not to fidget in the octopus hold of his limbs.

"Yes, you can. You're suffocating me, Myeon."

"No, I'm not. Let me scent you."

"Oh my god, would you let go a bit," Jongdae huffs. He wriggles and tries to make a little room for himself, pushing against Junmyeon's chin from below. "Who are you, my mother?" Junmyeon circumvents the shove to snort into his hair.

"At this point, I practically am. My little baby Jongdae, whom I've raised since you washed up on the shores of this grey city," he sighs, simpering emotional mimicry and well-practiced melodramatics. He tightens the circle of his arms, rubbing his nose and cheek all over the tope of Jongdae's head and making him squeak. Just for that, Jongdae whacks at him as well as he can from his prison of blankets and arms.

"Myeon, would you let the fuck up." He manages to wedge an elbow in between them, and Junmyeon lays back with a sigh and a pout. Jongdae gathers the covers around himself to retain some of his dignity.

"Seriously though, Dae, I'm sorry about this." Junmyeon voice comes from somewhere further up the bed where he rolled onto his back, but before long his hand is landing on the back of Jongdae's head, pushing through his hair. Jongdae shrugs.

"You're being dramatic, as usual. We'll still see each other. I'm just hoping you can behave yourself a bit better at your new dorms, you know, not make all of them hate you."

"You don't hate me."

"Tch."

"You'll do fine," Junmyeon says after a moment, fingers combing through Jongdae's hair and making him drowsy. The comment, though, still makes him frown.

"What do you mean I'll be fine," he mumbles petulantly against the fabric of his pillow. "Of course I'll be fine. I've lived without you before."

"I know. That's what I said." 

"Didn't sound like it." Jongdae shifts grumpily against the bed, trying to find the optimal point of contact between his skin and the sheets.

"Shut up. Go to sleep." Junmyeon doesn't let up the petting, and snuggles right back up behind him to press his nose into the nape of Jongdae's neck. Jongdae grunts.

"I'm way less of a mess than you are."

"Sure you are."

"All I have to do is act like a halfway decent human being. Unlike you, I'm a good roommate"

"Of course. Go to sleep." It sounds patronizing and insincere, but the room is very warm, and Jongdae's thoughts feel like slow molasses. There's a deeply lulling pull to the motions of Junmyeon's fingers through his hair, and the scent of the both of them in the enclosed air of the room is settling, heavier than the blankets and the heat they've cranked up to dispell the chill from outside. He grumbles something half-assedly discontent, and Junmyeon mumbles something back, and then he's asleep.

\---------

The next morning they don't have much else to do except help Junmyeon's ride-for-hire shove the mattress down the stairs and strap it to the top of the car. Considering how useless the both of them are during the entire process, it's surprising that nobody breaks at least one limb, and that Junmyeon's friend's patience has lasted her this far. She's been doing the chauffeur gig on and off for three days now, Jongdae knows. In her place, he would have long reached past her present stage of mildly annoyed, and gone on straight towards his own more standard verbal abuse

"You're gonna owe me for this one, Kim," she grunts, with one last heaved tug on cinched straps that makes the entire car bounce. As it is, Jongdae kind of wants to know how exactly Junmyeon roped her into it in the first place, but then Junmyeon is turning on the cluelessly apologetic omega act that he's perfected so disgustingly well and Jongdae doesn't want to be around at all anymore. It's a different kind of apologetic than the one he uses with Jongdae, or anyone else of his own dynamic. Less groveling. More simpering. Even after all the time he's spent in close proximity to Junmyeon, he still hasn't figured out how he manages to make himself look quite so genuinely sorry and concerned, but also infuriatingly small and soft. It has something to do with his eyebrows. Or the way he's tugging on his bangs. In any case, Jongdae sticks around long enough to see the alpha's angry expression lose some of its tension even though he knows that she knows exactly what Junmyeon is doing. And then he's gone.

There's just about nothing left of Junmyeon in the apartment, save for one last listless duffle bag of essentials waiting on Minseok's couch. The only thing left to do, which Jongdae might as well get over with while he waits for him to get back, is a final wipe-down of the general surfaces of Junmyeon's room with neutralizer. Then, because he's got the bottle in hand and he can, Jongdae gives the new couch a few spritzes of its own, just to get rid of any wafts of stranger-danger that his brain is probably making up -- it doesn't smell the way Jongdae remembers the alpha, so it probably wasn't his until very recently. He does a cursory round of the common spaces and the bathroom, which eventually brings him back around to Junmyeon's room, where he finds himself standing about mindlessly. The chemicals of the neutralizer don't really manage to completely erase all traces of Junmyeon's presence, not with how deeply the scent of him has sunk into the wood and the plaster over the last couple of years of doing as little laundry as possible. But it still hammers in the last nail of his roommate's departure, leaving the apartment as a whole feeling weirdly impersonal and vacant. Jongdae has the half-baked idea to air out the space one last time by opening the window, but the temperature swiftly convinces him otherwise, and he's in the middle of struggling to get the damn thing closed again when Junmyeon pokes his head through the doorway with his nose wrinkled.

"The whole apartment smells weird," he complains. "I don't like it."

"Well," Jongdae grunts, struggling. "It's not yours to not like anymore, is it. You have your own whole new place to go stink up as you please." He finally manages to get the last latch back in place, and when he turns around, Junmyeon hasn't moved from the doorway. His expression is wistful, which is never really a good sign on him.

"Man, this is weird." Junmyeon leans into the doorframe, and when he shifts his gaze onto Jongdae there's the edge of something there that has him getting defensive.

"What?"

"Nothing, I just." Junmyeon shrugs, and hesitates. "I don't like leaving you alone, that's all." Jongdae squints at him, pulling at his rubber gloves.

"Alone? You mean, alone with the big bad alpha?" Junmyeon gives him a look like Jongdae should know better, which he does, but in this scenario he's not the one being unreasonable.

"I mean, no, but like, yeah, maybe." Jongdae stops with his hand midway out of the second glove.

"Are you serious? You're literally the one who set this whole thing up."

"It was on short notice," Junmyeon defends, face flushing. "And I trust Xing, really, the dude seems like a great guy, but you know."

Jongdae does know, or at least he vaguely understands what Junmyeon is trying to get at, but he doesn't agree.

"No, Myeon, I don't," he tries to say with as much finality as he can, before turning halfway to pick up his discarded cleaning supplies. He hears Junmyeon huff in annoyance, but before he can do much, there's an arm in a coat sleeve looping around his shoulders while the rest of Junmyeon crashes into him from behind, and he only misses opening his cranial cavity on the windowsill because the arm is tugging him backwards till they're both on their asses on the floor, and Junmyeon is stuffing his entire face into the crook of Jongdae's shoulder.

"I'm not kidding, Dae," he says over Jongdae's undignified yelp. "Any kind of funny business, you say the word and he's gone."

"You're insane," Jongdae sputters. 

"I'm being serious!"

"No you're not, you're being extra, as usual." Jongdae is too busy trying to become reacquainted with his sense of balance to do much about his life-sized human leech yet, and Junmyeon is taking full advantage of that fact.

"Promise me you'll call if ever you need anything," he insists plaintively, voice muffled as he does his best to worm his nose under the collar of Jongdae's shirt.

"Jesus Christ, didn't you get enough of this last night?" 

Junmyeon makes a repetitive back-and-forth motion that might have been interpreted as a no, but is definitely just him spreading himself all over the line between Jongdae's shoulder and ear like he's trying to paint himself there. Jongdae struggles, as usual, both in dignity and with physical limbs.

"Promise me, Dae."

"Oh my god, I can solve my own problems like a big boy, Myeon. Why are you so fucking needy." He manages to create a minute amount of distance between the both of them, enough to twist around and glare while Junmyeon blinks up at him like he's begging. Jongdae tries to shove him further away with a hand on his face. "Not everyone is as much of a fucking trainwreck as you are." Junmyeon levels him with a flat look, which is impressive considering the angle he's at, and he opens his mouth to argue, but then there's a knock at the door of the room. Like a pair of bad actors, they both turn around to find Junmyeon's replacement standing in the frame of the door, hand raised mid-motion and eyebrows just as high. Junmyeon's arms are still looped around Jongdae's neck, his face level with a spot midway between Jongdae's jaw and his collarbone, and there is no way to disguise the fact that there had been some very aggressive scenting going on not just two seconds ago.

"Uh." 

Jongdae feels himself going deeply red. Junmyeon finally lets go, and he's still sufficiently unbalanced that it drops him onto his lower back before he can catch himself.

"Nice, Myeon."

"Am I, uh, interrupting?" Minseok says. There's definitely the corner of a smirk tugging at the edge of his face, no matter how much he's trying to suppress it. Jongdae hates it. It's exactly as he remembers: kittenish and adorable.

"No," Jongdae says, very pointedly, in Junmyeon's direction. "You were not."

"Sorry." Junmyeon pushes off the floor and weaves a hand around Jongdae's arm to heave him upright as well, ignoring the prickly glare aimed his way. He's making eyebrows at Minseok, a 'what can you do' expression that Jongdae wants to physically swat off his face. "We were just finishing up."

"I was just finishing up," Jongdae corrects. "He was bothering me," he points a finger accusatorially. He's acting like a kindergardener, but that's generally what Junmyeon brings out in him.

"I see." The amusement is showing through in Minseok's voice, and Jongdae is honestly unsure wether it's a comfort that he's so apparently unbothered by walking in on two omega engaging in what is otherwise a rather intimate activity, or if it makes the whole thing all the more embarrassing. Jongdae's own cheeks are still burning. "Well, uh, we're gonna start moving my stuff, if that's ok with you."

"'Course, go ahead. The place is all yours." Junmyeon shows the room around them with a vaguely sweeping gesture, and when he bends down to pick up his duffle bag he gives Jongdae a kind of bemused expression like he's trying to get him to find the humour in the situation as well. Jongdae keeps on glaring.

He manages to gather his cleaning supplies, and he and Junmyeon follow Minseok out of the room and into the common area where Chanyeol has just appeared in the doorway with a first box. The tall alpha beams, all gangly limbs and big ears poking out from under over-dyed tufts of pink hair, and Jongdae thinks that that's what people mean when they say someone's smile is blinding. On Chanyeol, it's more a question of intensity rather than poetics, really, but Jongdae thinks he can see the appeal.

He elects to accompany Junmyeon to his new dorm, both because he hasn't seen it yet and because he doesn't want to get in the way of all the heavy lifting. Minseok is wearing a tank top again, for some ungodly reason, along with a pair of loose yet strangely flattering sweats, and a backwards-facing snapback that completes an ensemble that Jongdae would qualify as douchey on literally anyone else. All the while Junmyeon waits around for Jongdae to bundle himself into his coat and two scarves and pull on his shoes, the little alpha muscles his way up the stairs with arms full of luggage and chest heaving, all of two morbidly fascinating trips. They're both uncharacteristically silent the entire time it takes to walk to the tram stop. 

For most of the trip downtown Junmyeon otherwise manages to control his melodramatics, save for one uncomfortably serious moment.

"I meant it when I said to call me if ever, Jongdae," he says. It's the tone of voice that he's using, probably, that has Jongdae less inclined to chew him out as he usually would for trying to baby him, makes him chew on his own lip instead as he glares his annoyance out at the quaint little streets rattling by.

"Sure," he dismisses. "I'm still the functional one, remember." Junmyeon doesn't say anything, just lets him have it. And, really, Jongdae know he's not being entirely fair. While Junmyeon in some regards is somewhat of a walking disaster, it also comes with the ability to create the illusion that he's on top of his shit, most of the time. Baekhyun likes to say it's because of the fact that Junmyeon comes from money, which might be true, but Jongdae knows that it's also due to abilities that are decidedly more middle-class. Like managing to unearth close-to but still off-campus housing for shockingly cheap. Or being able to hold his own in the aggressive haggling that the little old ladies at the open-aired market like to terrorize foreign students with. Being good friends with the nicest weed dealer on campus. All essential, world-savvy young adult skills that Jongdae likes to pretend that he has, but doesn't. He's a bit less of a walking disaster, he likes to think, but it's only by a very slight margin.

"I'll be fine, Myeon," he reassures nonetheless. "Really. And, you know, the same goes for you." Junmyeon awards him with a sweetly genuine smile and a squeeze of his elbow, and then they have to get off.

He stays over at Junmyeon's new place long enough to be introduced to a number of his new roommates who happen to be present, and sit on Junmyeon's bed for several hours to lazily play on his phone and enjoy watching him try to organize his stuff. Jongdae has done all the moving that he plans to do for the foreseeable future. By the time he heads home, it's dark, and he realizes as he steps out that he's facing an apartment that's still his but not really his anymore, and he has no idea what that'll look like.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So.
> 
> The response that I got on this was... way more than I expected. Wow. I uh. Will do my best to try and keep up the quality. (Meep).
> 
> I didn't really realize before I published it that the first chapter was like,,, 9k,,, probably because it'd been sitting in my folder for so long before I finally let it go. The other chapters will not, I think, be that long (this one is barely half that), for which I am not sure wether I should be apologizing or not.
> 
> I also mentioned in some comments that I will try to maintain biweekly-ish updates, but that is a very fat maybe.

There are a number of things that Jongdae learns about his new roommate over the course of the first couple of days that they spend living together.

The first is that Minseok has a lot of plants. This is particularly notable because, on the very first evening that Jongdae walks through the door, after leaving Junmyeon at his dorm, a number of these plants happen to be staring straight at him. With eyes.

The second thing that Jongdae notices is that Minseok wears the most absurdly adorable pyjamas that he's ever seen anyone use IRL. Button-down and dark grey, matching set and all, they've got a patterned print of artsy little cartoon cat heads and a collar more iron-flat than the oversized dress shirts that Jongdae wears to class. It's the type of sleepwear that he'd previously imagined existed only in unrealistic teen flicks about fake royalty. And yet. Minseok strolls in, probably summoned by the sound of the front door, hair dripping wet with a towel strung over the back of his neck, hands in his pockets, posture steady and alpha-solid and Jongdae's brain is quite blank. 

"I take it you've met the plants?" is what Minseok greets him with. He seems positively enchanted by the prospect. There's that curly edge of delight on his face that's always a novelty no matter how many times Jongdae's seen it: a slightly lopsided grin, one cheek scrunched up higher than the other, boyish excitement framed in dark hair and sharp brows.

"Uh." Jongdae is still stuck in the doorway. He's managed his coat and one of his scarves off, but he's still in his shoes. He sneaks a glance in the other direction, and indeed, he has met the plants. They're still staring at him. Or, rather, they're sitting in pots that are staring at him. Minseok giggles, and it sounds oddly sheepish.

"Yeah, I, uh, guess I forget they can take a bit of time to get used to. We can just turn them around if they bother you, or I can find a place for them in my room."

"No, no, they don't bother me," Jongdae hastens to correct. It's the truth, mostly. The display is admittedly impressive, with orchids and succulents and hanging creepers of various sizes all shoved onto the mantlepiece and the windowsill next to the couch, spilling over into the corner between. While not all of them do, a fair number of the smaller plants, on the mantle, have googly eyes affixed to the front of the ceramic potting -- and not in the haphazard way a five year old would have stuck them there with Elmer's Glue, either, but in a strikingly design-conscious manner like someone had the idea, gathered the necessary materials and expertise to make ceramic pots and googly eyes from scratch, and then successfully enacted the project. And while it feels suspiciously intentional that those are the only ones set up in any specific arrangement (all lined up in a row to face the entrance dead-on, rather than just shoved into the corner out of necessity), they don't take that much time to get used to. Hopefully.

"They're really pretty," he tacks on while he toes off his shoes. It's still not a lie, staring googly-eyed pots or not. Minseok practically radiates with the compliment.

"Thanks. They're my pride and joy." He looks at them from across the room, and his expression goes all soft and gooey, and again, Jongdae's brain is quite blank.

It stays that way for most of the following week. It's fall break, though; it's not like he has anything better to do. There's an accumulated backlog of missed drama episodes waiting for him to burrito blanket his way into rotting the inside of his brains out through his eyes, and then the more respectable allure of practice rooms that he gets virtually all to himself, what with campus being as empty as it is. Which, all in all, leaves him with an embarrassing amount of time to devote towards overanalyzing his new roommate's every habit and behaviour. Granted, Minseok has a lot of quirks -- there's his plants, his pyjamas, what Jongdae at some point discovers to be a fully non-ironic love of Taylor Swift (he owns a vinyl set of her albums, and, as far as Jongdae can tell, no corresponding vinyl player). But a good number of the things that really seem to floor Jongdae shouldn't, logically, warrant the level of unbridled fascination that they're garnering from him. They are, for the most part, really rather mundane.

For example, there's the fact that Minseok is not a morning person. It's fairly standard as far as character traits go, especially considering the fact that they're both college students, live practically on top of campus life at its thickest, and that most of their respective lives each involve university in some variation on the theme. If there's a time for whacky, non-socially-acceptable sleep schedules, it's college.

Minseok, however, does not apparently agree.

It's obscenely early, the first morning that Jongdae and Minseok officially cross paths as casual occupants of the same house. The only reason why Jongdae himself happens to be up and about is for the sole purpose of going from his bed to the bathroom and then straight back. It's his first real morning off since midterms that he gets to actually enjoy, which he plans on doing by being unconscious for most of it -- including the part where he relies on auto-pilot to empty his bladder. Auto-pilot, however, does not account for other people being also awake at such a rudely early hour, on a school holiday. Or for 'other people' to be anyone who is not Junmyeon. So he gets a good, cardiac arrest-inducing fright when the door at the other end of the hall gets shoved open with the characteristic groan of a century-old building, and Minseok himself stumbles out just as Jongdae has reached the threshold of his destination. Jongdae freezes, dumbly, caught like some sort of prey animal hoping to somehow avoid detection by just standing still, while Minseok totters blindly down the corridor in Jongdae's and the rest of the apartment's general direction. His eyes are glued firmly shut, one of the collar flaps of his pyjamas appears to be deeply embedded into the bottom half of his cheek, and as he draws level with Jongdae he emits what is assumed to be some kind of "good morning" grunt from a dark and unhappy place all the way down past his vocal chords and deep in his chest. He turns the corner into the kitchen, and Jongdae stays there, stuck in between fight and flight, until he hears the tell-tale sound of a coffee machine being flipped on and angrily coming to life.

The coffee machine is still shrieking its displeasure when Jongdae makes the return trip back towards warm blankets and oblivion. His roommate is standing in front of it, back to the rest of the room, with his head tilted slightly back and the rest of him leaning forward with just enough of an angle that Jongdae thinks he might just topple over. The coffee machine garbles spitefully, before coming to a sudden halt with one last hissing breath that rings as loud as the ensuing silence, and Minseok reaches blindly in front of him to shove the steaming mug directly into his face. Jongdae waits for something to happen. Nothing does. He has the absence of mind, for one oddly suspended half-second, to appreciate a particularly vertical-standing tuft of hair at the back of the alpha's fluffy head, before remembering that he'd much rather be unconscious and has no tangible reason not to be.

The entire encounter is… an experience, but it’s not like Jongdae really has the space or strength of mind at that point to regard it as anything more than one strong first impression amidst a number of other strong first impressions. As it turns out, though, Minseok’s little danse macabre march is a very regularly scheduled event that Jongdae gets to experience daily in some shape or form for however long their cohabitation is fated to last. In the immediate days that follow, Jongdae becomes very familiar with the sound of the coffee machine in the mornings. It is, invariably, the first thing that he hears, at 7:02 on the dot, with more punctual consistency than the church bells from the next block over. It’s not that it bothers him, per se. The sound is much less aggressive when muffled by the wall of Jongdae’s bedroom than it is blasted full-on in the middle of the kitchen, and he very quickly learns the trick of simply rolling over and going straight back to sleep. It’s just that, really, he doesn’t understand it. 

Minseok obviously isn’t built to physically cope with early morning hours. Jongdae only happens to catch glimpses of him in the immediate aftermath of waking up, after that first time, but he doesn’t think he’s ever met anyone more caricaturally brain-dead in the morning; and again, practically everyone he knows is a college student. Jongdae himself isn’t exactly that much of a late sleeper, most of the time. He feels guilty if he stays in bed past 11, but if he’s got no classes or other early obligations he’ll let himself laze around until at least 9 or 10. So no, he doesn’t really understand why his roommate finds it so imperative to be awake at the asscrack of dawn every single morning, some rain, shine, hell or high water, school holiday or not.

Apparently, he jogs. 

By the time Jongdae crawls out of his room, he's usually long gone. That first morning, he leaves a second mug of coffee on the breakfast table with a little note that reads 'don't know when you usually wake up, but I figured I'd make an extra one just in case ;)', which Jongdae finds and stares at for a while until Minseok himself is stepping through the front door, face glowing red, hair plastered to the sides of his head, chest heaving -- and bright, high smile plastered on when he sees Jongdae standing there in his thin t-shirt pyjama. 

"I wasn't sure if you drank coffee," he says, propping himself up against the side of the couch to take off his shoes. Jongdae stares at his arms. His throat feels like early-morning sandpaper, so he has to try and clear it before he says anything.

"I, uh, don't. Usually." Minseok's expression becomes, if anything, brighter, and Jongdae feels the back of his neck grow uncomfortably warm. With how the chill of the tiles under his bare feet is running up the length of his spine, the contrast raises goosebumps under the thin material of his baggy sleep shirt.

“You’re a better person than I am, then,” Minseok chuckles, happily self-depreciating. “It's probably cold by now anyways.” He leaves his sneakers behind, lined up in perfect symmetry on the mat besides the front door, and when he steps closer to reach for the mug on the table Jongdae is suddenly very aware of how sterile the air of the rest of the house still is. Minseok moves away to empty the coffee into the sink, and turns around just enough to look at Jongdae over his shoulder. From the side, his face loses some of its misleading plumpness, and the corner of his eye stands out in stark sharpness as he smirks in what is probably meant as shared humour. To Jongdae, it feels almost predatorial.

“Well, at least now I know.” He winks. Jongdae stares. “Good morning, by the way,” he adds, and then exits the kitchen by turning in towards the corridor to his room. 

In the following days, whenever Jongdae happens to catch any small glimpse of before-coffee Minseok, and immediately-after-morning-run Minseok, it's always invariably more of the same: brain death, and then chirping peppiness. He does everything with a small spring in his step, just that tiny traceable amount of cheery glee. Maybe it’s the fact that he happens to currently be really, really happy with the apartment. Maybe he makes his coffee with sugar and spice and everything nice.

Coffee, in contrast, just tends to make Jongdae really anxious.

Slowly, though, Minseok settles in, and Jongdae can tell that the alpha is being particularly mindful about it, in his navigation of the shared spaces. Either because he’s just scrupulously polite by nature, or because he happens to notice that Jongdae is rather skittish, by nature. Jongdae himself is as of yet unsure wether he finds that thought comforting or insulting.

Whatever changes he brings to the apartment are subtle and progressive. He doesn’t overtly scent-mark the house, Jongdae notices, or at least not at first. He just lets himself inhabit the place, until the only time Jongdae is really conscious of the fact that the apartment now smells dominantly of alpha is when he crosses the threshold into his own room, where traces of Junmyeon stick around stubbornly for days after the move. Almost like his ex-roommate had rolled himself around deliberately in Jongdae’s sheets to make sure he stayed there. Child.

Whatever physical modifications Minseok makes around the house, he does so generally when Jongdae happens to be around, and always manages to have him involved in the process in some kind of low-key, subtly inclusive manner. There’s an entire morning that Minseok devotes exclusively to his plants, running around taking care of them and describing each and every step with Jongdae as his unsuspecting, passive spectator, sitting around in his pyjamas on the couch, holding a bowl of cereal that's been empty for hours. Minseok really fucking loves his plants. There's an entire science to the way he sets them up: Jongdae learns that the row of google-eyed orchids and succulents, on the mantle, had been Chanyeol’s doing, and that Minseok for the record regrets ever having let the other alpha handle his precious flowers, and doesn’t know how he let it even happen in the first place. He gives Jongdae a full several-hour botany course on the proper care of orchids while he sets up a charming display of them in front of the window to the right of the hearth, which, according to his roommate, is the perfect spot because it faces westward and gives the orchids a "perfect amount of indirect light without putting them in the shade, and the radiator regulates the temperature without sucking out all the moisture like an electric heater would," and Jongdae finds himself humming his acknowledgement while his roommate points at the several-decades-old cast iron thing under the windowsill that keeps the room from freezing.

"But you still gotta make sure they're comfortably humid without over-watering them," he goes on, tucking a transparent plastic mist-sprayer into the corner besides the flowers. Jongdae nods along like he knows exactly what's up, until Minseok turns to look at him, and says, "you know?”, whereupon Jongdae freezes guiltily.

"Uh, well, I wouldn't trust me with any of that," he admits, shifting his feet against one another self-consciously. ”Junmyeon had a cactus once, and it died, and we're both pretty sure it was my fault.”

Minseok laughs before turning back to his plants with a simple, "I won't, then.”

When he’s done, the end result is deceptively homey. The googly eyes aren't all lined up anymore in a judgemental row, which makes the entire idea surprisingly more palatable, and there’s a little spot of green in every corner of the apartment that Jongdae can see. At that point, it’s early afternoon, and there are patches of sunlight hitting the room as it only ever does at that specific time of day. Minseok is at the other end of the apartment, doing something probably still plant-related, and Jongdae is buried from the neck down under a quaint heavy patchwork blanket that had been hanging over the back of the couch, for all the world sitting there just so he’d have something to pull over his threadbare pyjamas. He’s carved himself a deeply snug and safe crease into the arm of the couch, and before he really knows what’s happening, he’s falling asleep right then and there.

When he wakes up, it’s to a faceful of fabric that smells very strongly of his roommate. It fills his lungs, seeps into his unconscious like a hypnopompic hallucination, before Jongdae is groggily wrenching himself upright from the confusing sensation. Minseok is in the kitchen, poking at something on the stovetop that fills Jongdae's senses instead with the smell of food. 

“I think I may have bored you literally to sleep, this morning,” he admits ruefully, once he notices Jongdae’s probably very swollen face poking over the top of the couch. Jongdae manages a confused “huh?”, trying to blink the disorientation away, before pushing his face into his hands with a groan. It's already pretty dark outside, early autumn evening chasing away the remaining hours of daylight. His stomach rumbles uncomfortably at whatever Minseok’s cooking.

"Oh my god," he groans. His voice has a distinct nasal quality to it that only shows up when he’s particularly sleep-stuffy. He tries to massage his eyeballs right back into his skull, draws a heavy hand up into the unwieldy tangle that hangs over his forehead. Ugh. “I spent all day in my pyjamas,” he realizes, after he drops his hands back into the blanket pooled around his waist. Minseok laughs, bright and loud, like Jongdae’s tricked it out of him.

"Sorry," his roommate says, like he really believes he's at fault for Jongdae's extended impromptu nap. Jongdae frowns and tries to make his disagreement known by shaking his head and making some sort of negative sound. 

"No, it's not your fault," he says. He rubs his fingers haphazardly over his eyes again, wincing. He'd meant to spend at least a few hours on campus today, in one of the nicer, usually unavailable practice rooms. Welp. He flops back onto the couch, for all intents and purpose having basically given up, and Minseok laughs again from across the room while whatever he's making sizzles along in delight.

There are, however, a couple of instances of early living with Minseok that have Jongdae fleeing for the hills, in a manner of speaking. In other words, he hides in his room. While Minseok cleans. Which is a lot.

Jongdae already knew, to some extent, that Minseok was tidy. It'd been the biggest selling point that Junmyeon had used to convince him that the alpha was the perfect replacement roommate and not just a last-minute fix, something that Yixing as well had found pertinent to echo. None of that, however, comes anywhere close to describing the severity of just how clean Minseok means by "clean".

"It's almost aggressive," he tries to tell Baekhyun over the phone, maybe three or four days after the move.

"He's aggressive?" Baekhyun's response is difficult to make out, stuttering and staticky over the skype-like quality of the call. They turned off the video feed barely a few minutes into the conversation, in the vain hope that it'll help improve the audio quality. It doesn't.

"What?" Jongdae squints, as though somehow improving his vision will help him hear better. "No, he's not aggressive at all," he corrects emphatically, because the idea is absurd. "He's just aggressively clean."

"I'm confused."

"He's real fucking clean, Baek, not aggressively like, alpha-dominant.”

"Ok," Baekhyun concedes, sounding still confused, before tacking on, "...and you're complaining?"

Jongdae makes an odd noise that he's not sure translates well through the bad wifi. "You don't understand, Baek. It's like a whole other level. He's vacuumed the entire apartment twice since he's moved in. I think it relaxes him." Jongdae had spent a total of one slightly angsty afternoon wondering, over the sound of the vacuum cleaner roaring beyond the threshold of his door, wether it reflected on his own lowered standards of living that Minseok had deemed it necessary to so thoroughly polish every inch of the apartment first thing after moving in. And then again a few days later. The place had already been almost antiseptically clean after the move; Jongdae had made sure of it, had forced Junmyeon to walk the extra step before he’d fucked right off. But then Jongdae soon encounters the inside of Minseok's designated shelf in the bathroom cabinet, and decides that there are some levels of OCD that he would rather not compete with. 

"His towels are folded so perfectly it looks like they belong in a hotel bathroom. They're rolled up and tucked over and some other aesthetic shit, it's like origami with terry cloth." It also makes for a rather weird sort of cognitive dissonance, contrasting the pristinely arranged fabric with tiles that Jongdae only now notices are vaguely yellowed, and an Ikea shelf set that's missing a screw. "...Baek? Are you even listening?"

There's the indistinct sound of movement and interference at the other end of the line, enough to convey that Baekhyun is still there, if not at least paying attention.

"Is he around now?" comes the eventual response.

"No." Jongdae spares a glance through the open door of his bedroom towards the front door, as though to make sure. "I think he's at the gym." Baekhyun makes what Jongdae interprets as a slightly disbelieving sound.

"Didn't you say he runs every morning?"

"Yes," Jongdae bemoans. "Real fucking early."

"And he goes to the gym too? How often?"

"How am I supposed to know?" Jongdae says. “...I think this is like the second time, since he's moved in?" Who knows, though, maybe he'd been headed for the studio. Baekhyun, though, clicks his tongue once, before pronouncing:

"Gym rat." 

Jongdae frowns, confused and weirdly offended. "Where'd you get that from?"

"Does he drink protein shakes?"

"...Not that I've seen."

"What does he eat?"

"I dunno, Baek, it looks pretty healthy," Jongdae bites out, exasperated. "I think I saw some kale in there somewhere. There are these little energy ball things, in the fridge, that I think he eats for breakfast.” It had taken him an embarrassing five minutes of staring at that particular tupperware to figure out what they were. But to be fair, of all the things he's picked up about Minseok since the move, Jongdae hasn't really thought to pay that much attention to his diet.

"Does he live in sportswear?" comes Baekhyun's next line of questioning. Jongdae opens and closes his mouth a couple of times as he revisits the past couple of days and realizes that, yeah, there had been a disproportionate amount of Under Armour.

"...Uh."

"Gym rat," Baekhyun concludes decisively. 

"Or, I dunno, maybe he's just one of those people who have routines and stay healthy.”

"Ew, gross." Baekhyun sounds genuinely offended by the idea. "A health nut, then. Real question is," his tone grows suddenly, suspiciously serious, "how hot is he?"

"Baekhyun," Jongdae sputters, because of course he does.

"What? You're such a prude, c'mon. It's a legitimate question. He's an alpha, he works out. Is he swole?"

"Fuck you," Jongdae bites back, face aflame. He throws another glance towards the front door, like he expects Minseok to make a comedic entrance at any moment, before hissing out, "And for the record, he's not. He's like, kind of thick, but he’s not some sort of inflated bodybuilder, either.”

"Figures." There's a short silence as they both consider, and then: “What about his dick, you get a good look at that yet?” Which has Jongdae producing a loud, indignantly scandalized garble while Baekhyun snickers at the other end of the line. He knows perfectly well that the question will make Jongdae stupidly flustered; therefore, it satisfies the part of him that is both an unrepentant troll, and thirsty hoe.

“BAEKHYUN,” Jongdae heaves, once he has his breath back.

“C’mon, man, you gotta find out wether his knot’s just as thick as the rest of him.” There’s so much fiendish glee in Baekhyun’s voice, it practically drips through the wireless connection directly into Jongdae’s ear.

“He’s my roommate,” Jongdae hisses. His face is so, so hot. It’s physically painful.

“Exactly. Many chances for dick-spying. Much opportunity for accidental genital observation.”

“I hate you.” 

Baekhyun sniggers.

“You’re gonna see it at some point. You know it’s gonna happen.”

“I’m going to hang up.”

“Wait, wait!” Baekhyun chortles, and giggles some more, and Jongdae waits, seething, for him to work through it. “You're sure this is still the same guy that we Instagram-stalked, right?”

Jongdae exhales loudly, head falling onto the back of his chair with a thud. ”I ask myself the same thing, every day,” he groans. “I checked, though. There's a new photo. It's definitely him." It had been a goofy sort of close-up of the top half of Minseok's face, with a peace sign thrown up, and the window that had once been Junmyeon's in the background. The attached captions and hashtags, from what Jongdae had been able to understand, referenced the change of apartment. Minseok must've taken it the day he'd moved in.

"Wait, lemme see," Baekhyun says, and there's some more pronounced staticky sounds of fabric and furniture as he moves around, and a few clicks. "Huh," is the only response, after a few seconds.

"It's so fucking weird," Jongdae complains. He manages to keep the whine out of his voice, which is, really, a small victory. "His face doesn't match the rest of him at all, it's like a bad photoshop job. All he does is work out and clean and cook homemade meals and water his plants, and he's just so goddamn nice and polite."

"...Kinda sounds like a perfect roommate," Baekhyun points out.

"I know!" Jongdae exclaims. "It's so weird!"

"I mean, he also kind of sounds like a Stepford housewife more than a college-aged alpha."

Jongdae drags a hand down the front of his face and makes the sound of several dying whales, while flopping himself sideways onto the top of his desk. It's not particularly comfortable, but it feels appropriately dramatic.

"It's making me self-conscious, you know?"

"Not really," Baekhyun says, and Jongdae can hear the teasing that never really left his tone. "You're what, jealous?"

"What if I am?" he defends himself crossly. "Maybe I want to be that level of healthy and organized." 

"Suddenly I don't know you anymore." Jongdae glares at the woodgrain next to his nose.

"By the way," he says, without moving. "He's having a housewarming party, right before classes start. You're gonna be there." Baekhyun makes an offended noise.

“Bitch, if you think I'm not coming over first thing after I land to ogle your weird new wonder-roommate, you've dumber than I thought." Jongdae stares at his wall instead of the surface of his desk, resigned. The wall offers very little support.

"Whatever."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is way too short and I'm not 100% happy with it but it had to come out at some point so bleh. 
> 
> Unfortunately, I'm going to have to take about a month or so off to work on other projects, so small hiatus coming up -- apologies. Hope you enjoy nonetheless <3

It takes a while to get used to how intensely clean Minseok is, Jongdae has to admit. Mostly because it really does make him self-conscious. He's used to being the one making sure that the place is held up to some level of acceptable standard; not the other way around. And while Minseok is neither obnoxious, demanding, nor particularly rude about it, Jongdae can't help but panic just a little, whenever he sees but a single unwashed glass left to sit in the kitchen sink, horribly self-aware of how he's the only one who could have ever possibly left it there.

But then again, Jongdae has never had much chill to begin with.

He does, however, eventually get used to it — surprisingly enough. He apparently manages to find some vestiges of chill. In fact, everything about Minseok, past a certain point, kind of loses its veneer of whiplash-inducing newness, assimilated into normality by repetition and routine. He just... melts, somehow, into the fabric of Jongdae's life. He barely ever notices the googly eyes anymore. Dark blue pyjama set with a different pattern of cute little cat prints, that Minseok whips out nearly a week in? Jongdae bats an eyelid, and moves on. The coffee machine rarely ever wakes him up at this point; he just power-sleeps right through. It's a talent.

His roommate is not particularly socially active either, as far as Jongdae can tell. Which, to be fair, might also be symptomatic of the fact that being an international student in a college ghetto over fall break is a rather isolating experience, rather than a sign that Minseok is otherwise that much of a homebody. They cross paths a few times a day, uneventfully; usually, when Minseok comes back from his morning run, ruddy-faced and out of breath, spiking the air with the outdoorsy scent of the nipping cold, and the sharp, sweat-heightened tang of himself. He greets a cheery good morning on his way to the shower, while Jongdae blearily blinks his response from over his cereal bowl. Sometimes, in the late afternoon, when Jongdae comes home from a few easy hours of practice on campus, and Minseok happens to be puttering around in the kitchen, they'll share a meandering orbit in between worn countertops and a too-loud fridge, exchanging empty small talk. Jongdae learns that Minseok TAs a digital performance class this semester that the teacher basically leaves him to manage all on his own, which is both a nice show of trust and a minor shrug-off of responsibility. It mostly means that, apart from the move, much of his fall break has been devoted to grading undergrad assignments.

It surprises Jongdae, how readily he sometimes forgets that Minseok is even supposed to be there at all. There'd been that one time, when he'd omitted to bring a change of clothes with him to the bathroom, so after his shower he’d had to execute a half-naked dash for his bedroom door wrapped in a single towel around his waist and one draped over his head, dripping all over the place and feeling real guilty about it. One of a list of bad habits he’d need to get rid of now that he no longer lived with Junmyeon, or even someone of his own gender. Luckily, Minseok had been in his room.

At another point, the alpha is absent for most of the day, so that Jongdae thinks it sufficiently safe to commandeer the common space for a few hours, just long enough to lose himself in the latest, most well-executed plot twist of the current season of Blooming Days. He's nearly caught up; the last few episodes are just particularly, engrossingly gut-wrenching, enough that he barely notices the slow ebb of daylight leaving the room until he's sitting at the kitchen table with his chin on his knees, face bathed in the alien, blueish glow of his laptop, and the city outside the windows is dark.

The bubble is burst with the sudden, intruding creak of the front door and the following clatter of his roommate running up the stairs. There's some flailing, hands waving around in a ridiulously uncoordinated attempt to hit the space bar on his laptop, which he finally achieves in the seconds during which Minseok throws open the landing door and feels around for the light switch. He hits it and drops a handful of groceries at his own feet while Jongdae tries to fight off the effects of sudden-onslaught blindness.

"You ok?" he asks, bemused.

"Yes," Jongdae squeaks. "Just surprised me."

"You were sitting around in the dark," he notes, helpfully, and pockets his keys. Jongdae frowns, feels like he's being called out. He tries not to.

"...Time got away from me?"

"Ok," Minseok smirks. "What are you watching?"

"Nothing," Jongdae mutters. He reaches for the lid of his laptop, more than ready to vacate the premises, but Minseok takes the half-step forward necessary for him to brace a hand on the back of Jongdae's chair and peer over his shoulder at the screen.

"What is it? Looks riveting."

"...It is," Jongdae admits, slowly pushing the lid down. He can't tell wether Minseok is being sarcastic or not. He realizes he's never actually heard his roommate overtly use sarcasm before at all, so he actually has no basis of comparison. He closes the lid of the laptop and reaches for the abandoned dinner plate that's been cluttering the table since he sat down for lunch and then never got back up.

"...Ok," Minseok repeats again. He's still leaning over his shoulder. Jongdae tries to inch past and out of his chair, dishes held close to his chest and face probably well on its way to deeply red, which is, really, unnecessary and inconvenient. He makes it to the sink, power-washes his tableware, then he tries to scuttle away with his computer under an arm as casually as he can while his roommate hauls in his food. He looks amused. Jogdae just wants to give Minseok some space, really. He’s got all those groceries.

So, point of fact, most and any awkwardness between them, Jongdae probably only has himself to blame for.

But there is much less of it than he would have initially given himself credit for. It’s nice. Minseok is nice. He's mellow and easy, and Jongdae actually finds himself relaxing, letting the days go by, unaware. He finishes Blooming Days; he cries at the season finale. Makes sure his door is closed very shut while he ugly-sobs through the scenes, tries not to make too much noise. Minseok is on the other side of the apartment, though, doing whatever it is that he does when he’s not terrorizing the microbial ecosystem of their apartment with a broom and a mop. Therefore, Jongdae gets to brush his teeth and wash his face without having to interact with embarrassingly obvious puffy eyes and a ruddy nose. He goes to bed with that funny kind emotional fullness that floats, buoyant, until he drifts off.

———————

The next day, Minseok asks him wether it’s okay if he has a friend over.

Jongdae frowns, confused.

“…Of course?” Jongdae he hedges. “I mean, it’s your house too?”

“Well, yeah,” Minseok acquiesces. He cocks a hip, leans against the side of the table, and folds his arms casually. “I just wanted to give you a heads-up.” He’s actually not wearing a tank top or t-shirt today, miraculously. He’s in jeans and a striped crewneck sweater. For once, he’s dressed like he could believably be the same person as the one whose Instagram page Jongdae will never admit he still has open on one of the many open tabs on his phone. By this point, though, Jongdae is so painfully familiar with the sight of his bare arms that the effect is completely ruined; the extra fabric just looks weirdly out of place.

“…Ok, well. Thanks?” Jongdae considers the fact that Minseok apparently made an effort to dress up, and then adds, “Are they coming soon?”

Minseok twists around to poke at his phone on the table, for the time, before saying, “Should be in a few hours.” And then a really loud, insistent knocking takes them both by surprise, and Minseok looks at the door with his eyebrows raised.

“…Or they could show up right now.”

Jongdae has about a split half-second of manic alarm to come to terms with the fact that he, in stark contrast, is not dressed any particular way. He's in his prime lazy-day wear, his favourite formless comfort clothes, and there is absolutely no way he would realistically have the time to go throw on something more presentable while Minseok gets the door. It would also be ridiculous; it's not like it's his responsibility to entertain Minseok's guests, guests whom Minseok himself had been unaware were happening at this exact moment. But then he does pull open the front door, and Jongdae is seized with an entirely different kind of alarm when he recognizes what is unmistakeably none other than Baekhyun's voice echoeing up through the stairwell : "Damn."

Jongdae trips over the arm of the couch in his scramble to get to the entrance, only catching himself on the doorjamb just in time to see his roommate shift to the side to let Baekhyun in, who enters, very un-casually ogling him up and down.

“Baekhyun,” Jongdae gasps, and mercifully that gets them to both turn their attention upwards.

“Dae,” Baekhyun echoes, grinning, and launches himself up the steps. When he reaches level with Jongdae he winks. “Happy to see me?”   
Jongdae glares. “You could have told me you'd landed.”

“Nah, this is more fun.” Baekhyun scampers into the apartment, takes a look at the living room, and turns around to arch an eyebrow at him. Behind them, Minseok closes the door.

“I’m guessing he’s one of yours?” he asks.

"Yeah," Jongdae says, distractedly trying to keep an eye on the imp currently drinking in the sight of the appartment, and also sniffing around. As in, visibly breathing in through his mouth to taste the air."...This is Baekhyun."

Baekhyun pirouettes around to give a cheery wave, grin wider and sharper than a Cheshire cat's, and Jongdae feels the first inklings of dread crawl up his spine.

"Nice to meet you," he sing-songs. "I'm this idiot's best friend." He pauses. "Actually I'm his only friend."

"Fuck you," Jongdae spits.

"You too," Baekhyun responds sweetly. He gets distracted by the quilt on the couch, and pokes at it a bit, expression openly curious.

"Nice to meet you," Minseok echoes. Jongdae is starting to recognize that specific sort of casual bemusement on the alpha; he seems almost as interested by Baekhyun as Baekhyun is by the patchwork, but more subdued. Then again, Jongdae has known carnival processions with more composure than Baekhyun.

"I'm sorry," Jongdae apologizes all the same. "I had no idea he was gonna show up."

"It's fine. It's also your house," Minseok reminds him. But either it's Jongdae's admittedly overactive brain, or he's not actually imagining the incrimentally more guarded expression of his posture. He crosses his arms again; this time it's stiffer. His shoulders seem wider. He leans against the side of the couch, just as casually as before, but his eyes never leave Baekhyun, whose own are freely roaming the visible space with one hand still pressed to the quilt on the couch.

It's probably Jongdae's brain.

"...Yes, well." In the few seconds occupied by Jongdae's unnecessary scrutiny of Minseok's body language, Baekhyun's gone from crouching over the couch to the other side of the room, opening the cupboards and mouthing something, wide-eyed, at Jongdae over his shoulder. Jongdae doesn't bother trying to read his lips; he just reaches for Baekhyun's sleeve and tugs at it to drag him over and away. Surprisingly, he follows easily enough. The cupboards stay open. "We've got, er, lots of catching up to do," Jongdae tells Minseok, apologetic, and Minseok placates him with an easy smile.

"Yeah, we do." Baekhyun follows the tugging easily enough, but it's accompanied by another sweeping appraisal of Minseok that Jongdae wants to cringe at.

"Take off your shoes, asshole," he snaps tersely. Baekhyun sniggers.

"Sure thing, princess." He toes them off and kicks them over haphazardly, and they land in just as much disarray, one of them right in front of the door and the other besides the foot of the couch. Jongdae doesn't even have to push or pull to get him in the direction of his own bedroom, he goes there himself, unzipped coat hanging half off of one shoulder, and Jongdae kicks at the shoe most likely to be a tripping hazard to exile it somewhere closer to the spot shoes are actually supposed to go and then he follows. A glance over his shoulder tells him Minseok is looking at his phone. He shuts the door behind himself.

"Dude," is the first thing Baekhyun says.

"Shhh," Jongdae gestures pleadingly. The walls are paper-thin, and his roommate is still barely on the other side of the living room, and generally it's best to take all precautions when given the chance to brace oneself for whatever comes out of Baekhyun's mouth.

"Okay but like, dude," Baekhyun repeats, in more of a stage-whisper. He's standing in the middle of the bedroom, eyes wide. "You were fucking lying."

"What do you mean I was lying?" Jongdae is genuinely confused.

"He's fucking built." Baekhyun points to the interconnecting wall.

Jongdae blinks. "He's not that built."

"Uh, hello?" Baekhyun holds up his own tiny wrist for show, poking out of the puffy sleeve of his jacket, which admittedly still doesn't do much without the presence of its supposed contrasting model. "Thicc much?"

Jongdae looks between wrist and Baekhyun, Baekhyun and wrist, letting all of of his unimpressed skepticism be written plainly on his face. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean." 

"It means that you're a liar." Baekhyun shakes the wrist in his direction, so that the hand on top flops around in an unthreatening mockery of a fist. "Your roommate is built as fuck. You just choose to not see it 'cause he's kinda small." The wrist finally drops.

Jongdae opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, brow twisted painfully in some sort of unwilling affront. Why Baekhyun chooses to fixate in on these types of details is far beyond him, and generally he's pretty good at just letting them go. Generally.

"I do not!"

"And the plants?"

"I told you there were lots of plants!"

"But like, orchids."

"So??"

"And you know you reek of alpha, right?"

"I live with one!"

"I can barely smell you, like, at all anymore."

Jongdae sputters a bit. "You're exaggerating, and also a drama queen. And why does it even matter?"

"He dresses like a fucking boy scout."

"Not usually!"

"Why are you defending him?"

"I'm not-- Baekhyun!" Jongdae fumes, finally, exasperated. Baekhyun can't really keep down his grin anymore. An absolute troll. "What the fuck."

"He's really hot," is all that he says.

"So what?"

"His tastes are really weird, though."

"So what?!" Jongdae likes Minseok's tastes. They're way better than Junmyeon's, or his own, the first of which he will enjoy rubbing in his ex-roommate's face, the second of which he'll just keep quiet.

"I mean, come on, he owns fucking--"

He's interrupted, though, by a third voice, muffled from beyond the wall but still ringing clearly through. "Bitch," it says. "You put up the goddamn string lights."

Baekhyun's mouth is still partially open, right where it'd been left midway through his sentence, but he closes it quickly while they share a look. The door isn't that far behind Jongdae, so he just has to twist around and reach over to pull it open. Both of their heads poke out.

There's a fourth person who has apparently just stepped through the open doorway, Minseok right on their heels. Their eyes are intently focused on the front end of the living room, away from Jongdae and Baekhyun, and while Minseok closes the door behind himself for the second consecutive time, he looks from his guest to the two of them with a rather more frazzled sort of bemusement than Jongdae is used to.

"So Lu Han decided to show up a couple of hours earlier anyways," he explains. And then whips around just about the prettiest omega that Jongdae has ever laid eyes on.

Legs. Legs for days. Black stockings in combat boots and shorts and black-rimmed doe eyes, all long limbs and cutely round face. The eyebrows though, and whatever sharp thing it is that they're doing on top of the omega's face, are less cute than they are pointedly amused and assessing.

"Well, hello," he? -- she? -- it's impossible to tell -- says, to both him and Baekhyun, and then very specifically to Minseok, "Baozi, which one of these is your roommate?"

Minseok gives the omega a fleetingly flat look, and then, almost defeatedly, raises a hand to point in their direction. "Jongdae, meet my own... well, best friend: Lu Han."

Jongdae raises a small hand to wave. Lu Han smiles sweetly, and Jongdae is confounded at ever having though of gentle, placid Minseok as anything even close to predatorial.

\-------------------------------------------

It's a rather strange afternoon. Lu Han sheds clothes the minute after the introductions, leaving one bomber jacket here, a plaid flannel there, heavy boots kicked up in jolly camaraderie with Baekhyun's scattered sneakers, and then walks up and down the appartment on slender stilt-legs giving out loud, opinionated commentary on just about everything.

"I can't believe you kept the fucking string lights," they say, for one, pointing overhead at the little orbs of coloured luminaries that Jongdae had helped put up not a few days prior.

Then, with a snort, at the still-open kitchen cabinet, full of perfectly lined-up rows of mismatched mugs: "Of course." (They also leave it open.)

Yelled over from the far-flung region of Minseok's room: "You really need to fucking change your goddamn bedspread, Minnie, the cat thing got old like ten years ago."

Marching back over towards the front of the house with a rolled-up, tucked-over towel held up in one hand: "You have issues, Seok, I hope you fucking know that."

And finally crouched over by the orchid window, gaze calculating: "If the giant idiot broke even one of these things I was gonna string him up by his own ballsack. These cost me actual money," he points at one of the googly-eyed pots. "And they have, like, sentimental value."

"You only care about those because they freak people out." Minseok leans against one of the kitchen chairs, looking for all the world like he would very much like to sit down, but for some reason he doesn't.

"And because they were an actually heartfelt gift," Lu Han does their best to sound wounded.

"I take all of your gifts to heart," Minseok points out, not without a hint of a preen. Lu Han snorts.

"Apparently. You've, like, put all of them up." He considers the orchids once more. "Shame, though. I kinda would've liked the excuse to string him up by his ballsack."

Minseok doesn't hear this, though. He's thinking. "...I did get rid of the sage, though."

"The what?" Lu Han turns around, clearly not following.

"The sage. It smelled pretty funky."

"Oh, that." Lu Han snorts again. "You actually tried to use it?"

Minseok shrugs. "Might as well. Jiyong's place smelled pretty awful."

"What about the, what was it, the zodiac art shit?"

"Tarot," Minseok corrects.

"Yeah, that."

"Haven't found a place to put it yet. The apartment's kinda small."

"Literally just stick it anywhere. Also the string lights should definitely go up in the corridor."

"The string lights are fine where they are," Minseok protests. "Me and Jongdae put a lot of thought into it."

Baekhyun and Jongdae have been sitting more or less in the crosshairs of the conversation the entire time, unnaturally silent for the first, and pretty standardly overwhelmed for the second, from their shared cushion on the couch. Now, though, Jongdae is apparently the spotlight host, and he shoots Minseok an alarmed look while Baekhyun gives him one with sardonically raised eyebrows, while Lu Han leans back on skinny arms and looks Jongdae up and down for the second time that evening, eyes glittering doe-black.

"We, we can put them up wherever," Jongdae tries to placate -- who exactly, he's not sure. Someone. Anyone. Minseok waves his panic away.

"It's fine, Jongdae, they're good where they are. Han's just trying to fuck with me."

"You have the most adorable fucking eyebrows," says Lu Han.

"What?"

"Han," warns Minseok.

"What, it's true!" Suddenly Lu Han is crawling over with all the grace of a cat who is also somehow a long-legged deer, or maybe a giraffe, and they prop up an elbow on the unoccupied couch cushion, head cocked to the side. The t-shirt they're wearing has a pretty loose collar, that somehow manages to make the already long line of their neck arch even further. They're looking up at him, but Jongdae feels very pinned down. "They go up in the middle, all the time, it's so cute." A long, willowy hand comes to hover some couple of centimeters away from the middle of Jongdae's forehead, and he can feel Baekhyun watching the entire thing over his shoulder like a hawk, or a very avid movie-goer, while Jongdae sinks into his skinny frame to inch ever so slightly away from the pretty fingers.

"Lu Han," repeats Minseok, plaintively.

"Tsk." Lu Han leans away with a self-assured slouch, propping their head up on one bent elbow. Their eyes don't leave Jongdae's face. "Anyways the lights should go on the other side of the apartment. It's emptier."

So the lights go on the other side of the apartment. Not in the corridor, as first suggested, because halfway through Minseok pulling them down from where they originally had been placed and trudging over to the newly decided-upon spot (by Lu Han), the plan is changed (by Lu Han) and they go over the corridor archway instead. Jongdae tries to get up to help but Lu Han very pointedly tells him that "Baozi can manage just fine on his own."

Baozi can, in fact, not manage just fine on his own, because Baozi is significantly shorter than the average alpha population, and so Lu Han gets roped into the set-up as well while Jongdae and Baekhyun (who are both the same height as Minseok anyways, or, in Jongdae's case, probably shorter) watch the whole thing from over the back of the couch.

The result is nice. Jongdae isn't sure wether it's nicer than the original setup or even in any way worth the entire hassle, but who is he to say. Lu Han, at the very least, seems to have fun.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hellooooo. I'm going to cut out the explanation for where I've been and assume that everyone just understands that, like, 2020.
> 
> This is really more like a quarter of a chapter, specifically the missing quarter of the last chapter that I posted early just to get smthng out there before I disappeared for way longer than planned. In case everyone forgot: Last time on HJNPT, we met Lu Han and Baekhyun, mild shenanigans occured, and Jongdae was just that much more overwhelmed.
> 
> Unfortunately, I don't think updates will be that much faster going forward because I'm going back to school in September, on top of work and ongoing medical issues (non covid related) and Stuff.
> 
> I would also like to very much thank everyone who has commented and left kudos, and highlight that I am grateful for each and every one, even though I'm a walking disaster who never answers anyone. I hope you enjoy what little I can provide.

Lu Han is still around, late into the evening, long after each party has retreated to their respective end of the house with their respective guest. Jongdae eventually kicks out Baekhyun for smelling like stale airport air and travel sweat and, as usual, for being a general nuisance. In the relative silence that follows the click of the front door, Jongdae can hear the lilt of Lu Han's voice from the far room, accompanied by the low murmur of what can only be Minseok. The walls are very thin, but there are several of them in between them once Jongdae falls back to his own space. He starts a new drama, one that's been on his list for a long while. It's good; better than he expected. He falls asleep much later than he had planned to.

Lu Han is there in the morning, when Jongdae wakes up. He wanders out of his room to the overpowering smell of bacon, and they're sitting at the kitchen table: slumped over, eyes closed, somehow still unearthly pretty despite the bedhead and what looks like an old baggy t-shirt that is neither the right length or width. At the stove, Minseok stands in his running gear over a sizzling pan. He hums, slightly and tunelessly. When Jongdae hesitates to a halt, he looks up and smiles.

"Morning."

"Morning."

Lu Han makes a sound, a half-articulated "Hah?" that morphs into something more pleased when they look up to see him.

"Jongdae!" they say, and smile as well, lazy and sharp. They pull their limbs forward into a slow, deep cat's arch. With the tips of extended fingers, lightly they tap the surface of the table opposite themself. "Come sit with us."

Jongdae sits.

"Baozi," they call out, after skinny arms are put back in place. "Get Jongdae some coffee."

Jongdae opens his mouth to stutter a refusal, and Minseok is already there. "Jongdae doesn't drink coffee," he explains. In the same breath, he settles a steaming cup in front of Lu Han.

"Really? God." They make a face. In his other hand, Minseok lowers down a heaping plate of food that also goes to Lu Han. It's piled high with little golden diced potatoes, runny eggs and sizzling strips of bacon. It reeks of grease and starch, oil and cravings. He sets it on the table with a studied flourish and a mocking, "Milady." Lu Han ignores him to stare greedily at the food.

"Well, sit with us anyways, Jongdae," they say, picking up forks and knives. "I had Minseokkie make you some too." Minseok snorts, but magics forth a second and third plate. He sets one in front of Jongdae, who babbles a thank-you, and when he pulls away the rush of air that trails behind is heady and full.

"You're doing the dishes, by the way," Minseok tells Lu Han after they've both shovelled a few forkfuls away. He's relaxed, Jongdae notes. Sat down, his shoulders are thrown back, with a slouched ease that Jongdae is unused to. His expression is put-upon, and transparently for show.

"You need to shower," Lu Han says. Their button-nose wrinkles. They spear bits of egg onto their fork with ravenous disdain. "You stink, man."

Minseok shrugs.

"You're the one who wanted breakfast now," he points out. “Not later. And this way," he says around another helping of potatoes. "I won't smell like bacon grease all day long."

"No, but the kitchen will smell like your body juice."

Minseok's face contorts. "Gross, Han.”

“And bacon grease.”

“Please stop."

Lu Han grins like a fox around his food, and winks at Jongdae, who freezes.

\-------

Lu Han becomes somewhat of a fixture. They'll often stay till late; they're not always there in the morning. Jongdae is pretty sure that they sleep over, at least some of the time, but not always, and it's often hard to tell. Sometimes they'll just walk out of the hallway or the bathroom or in through the front door, nonchalant, and beautiful, and always cannily amiable.

They’re very magnetic. When they inhabit a room, they occupy it. Not with heavy cloying pheromones, or in that way that makes charismatic alphas seem bigger than the walls that can’t contain them. Lu Han has an arrestingly cherubic face, and great big round eyes often sharply lined in black. They pin you down.

"What are you majoring in?" they will ask, innocuously, and listen to Jongdae explain his very straightforward degree with a look that he can't begin to imagine deciphering, but that gives him the unfounded impression of being mocked.

"How has Baozi been treating you," they will say, threateningly, while Minseok snorts in the background at the dig on his honour. "If he's been dense or in any way unaccommodating I can make him suffer for it. Greatly." Jongdae doesn't know what to do with the joke, or the sleazily complicit grin.

He feels snapped-to like a taught rubberband under the intensity of their attention, flabby and relieved when they turn away. Minseok lights up when they're around. He smiles wider, gummier. It makes him look criminally young. He laughs a lot too, easily and freely, at each of Lu Han's sharp sarcastic jokes; they come with a steady supply of news and gossip, quipping incessantly about a list of mutual acquaintances whom Jongdae does not know. If one were to believe all the stories, the graduate school is an unholy kindergarten of emotionally stunted assholes who believe themselves overqualified for life as a general rule.

Jongdae doesn't know if he does.

Lu Han is very much at home where Minseok is too, easily so, even when that space is one that Jongdae also happens to inhabit. He finds that the walls of his personal bubble are coiling in on him like an inconveniently spooked pangolin; he's receding, quietly, even as the imprint of Minseok is taking hold, until he has retreated to an island of himself surrounded by the walls of his room. He thinks that he's the only witness to the change. But he doesn't quite begrudge Minseok the incursion. There's only so much one can expect of an alpha in their own space, and Minseok's ubiquitousness does not raise Jongdae's hackles the way that Lu Han apparently does. Jongdae is unsure wether it's some sort of internalized double standard that he should be examining more closely, or if it is in fact weird that Lu Han is around so often.

_I mean its not that weird_ , Baekhyun texts, when he asks. Jongdae attempts, haltingly, to tap out a reply, some sort "yes but." He deletes and stares at his ceiling.

_Unless there being like rlly obnoxious_ , the phone dings. Jongdae tries consider wether they have been. Not really.

_I mean its probably only till break ends. But if it bothers u dude its ur apartment. Just tell em._

Jongdae does not tell them.

He doesn't really help himself either. He stays inside. People have starting trickling back into campus, and after the blessed isolation of having the premises all to himself, he finds that he is particularly unwilling to share. Students in the academic buildings during break are the worst, too, loud because no one will tell them not to be, aggregating in small packs that force passers-by to skirt around, and filling the empty halls with the canned echoes of dumb posturing. Jongdae would rather not.

Instead he whiles away his hours to a backdrop of Lu Han and Minseok. Their easy banter filters through the walls and doors, in snippets of familiarity that only ever half make sense out of context. Too many inside jokes. On the outskirts, Jongdae avoids the brunt of Lu Han's direct line of sight. They are, at least, inordinately busy, often coming and going between different places and people, events of varying degrees of officiousness or scandal that they are somehow involved in. Jongdae, meanwhile, listlessly watches episodes of dramas that he starts and does not finish. Listlessly, he replies to Baekhyun's steady stream of memes and gifs of memes on Messenger. And, listlessly, he builds arguments in his own head for the importance of maintaining the diligence of his practice despite his unwillingness to go on campus, or sing technical scales for an involuntary audience of roommates who are not Junmyeon.

He expects to last this way until classes start, and schedule and structure are forced back on him like one of those medical corsets that correct scoliosis. Or maybe like the stilts that hold up puppets. The Sesame Street ones. He doesn't expect to see Baekhyun or much of anybody at all until then either, and of course, he forgets that there's supposed to be a housewarming party, at some point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- I'm no longer on twitter, though tbf i never really was -


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